The Big Picture

The point of this project was to explore the different ways light enters a building. This is often determined by how a building is placed on a site. In this specific case I had to place this chapel on a site to achieve effective instances of light. The building itself was designed with the thought of having the location of light constantly changing as the day progressed. This is why almost each room uses at least two different interactions to alter where the light in the room is at any given point of the day. The most obvious parts of the building which show this are the Main Sanctuary and the Main Hallway. When placing the chapel on the site, orientation of the pre-existing buildings were looked at. All the previous construction fought the natural direction of the sunlight. As seen in the picture above, all the buildings point North-East to South-West and vice versa. Because of this orientation, most sunlight which hits these buildings is indirect. As a result the potential for light use is squandered. This is why for my building; I rotated my building to run in a East to West Orientation. This combination when combined with such features of the building as the Main Hall orientation, the result is effective use of light.

The building also uses several fundamental ordering elements. One of the more obvious in the project is the cone-shaped lobby. This serves somewhat as a hierarchy. This is for the fact that it ties all of the elements of the building together with the circulation. In addition it provides as focal point for the eyes to focus on when looking at the building. The Main Hall acts as a datum by which the circulation branches off, and ties all these circulation patterns together to provide a clear and obvious radial arrangement. A final instance of ordering is the extension of the existing internal structure to make a formal entrance. This entrance also creates an element to make the building define the circular space.